Alexis P. Morgan, my neighborhood village witch, joined me to talk about how she kept being called to learn magic and sorcery. We talk about the differences between hoodoo and voodoo, her Tarot card collection, and her primary community service - The Juno Jar. The winter Juno Jar is available starting on November 1, 2021, on a sliding scale.
Happy Birthday Alexis!
Thank you to Dave Coustan for editing this week's episode.
Follow @findingfavspod on Instagram and Twitter. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts
Show Notes
- The Sorcerer's Secrets: Strategies in Practical Magick by Jason Miller
- Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System by Katrina Hazzard-Donald
- Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica by Zora Neale Hurston
- Hera's Compassion painted by Christy Tortland
Alexis 0:00
Hello, my name is Alexis P. Morgan, and my favorite thing is magic.
Announcer 0:06
Welcome to the Finding Favorites podcast, where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.
Leah Jones 0:18
Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And it is Sunday, October 31st. It's Halloween! And boy, does Chicago have perfect weather for Halloween. This weekend has been a super fun weekend; my twin sister came up, and we're helping my nephew move into his very first Chicago apartment. And then we did a fire pit and told spooky stories and drank hot cider and ate Halloween candy. And now, I'm just watching the sky get brighter, and looking forward to a really another nice fall day.
Leah Jones 1:01
This week, I got my chemo port, which is a device that sits right under my skin to help with IVs and chemo infusion for the next year. 12 weeks of chemo, but they keep it in for a while for other treatments and other possibilities. So, that is a weird, very weird sensation. But it's healing, and I'm getting more mobility back every day.
Leah Jones 1:29
This week, on Finding Favorites, we have Alexis Morgan. Alexis is my neighborhood sorceress. She works in magic -- it also happens to be her birthday. Happy birthday, Alexis. I didn't necessarily plan that when we recorded this episode, but it's kind of fun. So, I hope you're having a *wonderful* birthday and that this year is outstanding.
Leah Jones 1:54
We talk a lot about how she got called into doing magic and the differences between Hoodoo and Voodoo initiation rites. We also talk about Juno Jar, which is a service that she offers, that starts -- sign-ups go up tomorrow, for this wealth-building service --listen to her describe it. There'll be a link in the show notes to her website with all the information. And I hope that you have a wonderful Halloween and I definitely want to see pictures of your cute -- all the costumes. I want to see all the costumes. You can follow me on social media @chicagoleah on Twitter and TikTok, @chileah on Instagram. Finding Favorites you can find @findingfavspod on Twitter and Instagram. Wear your mask, wash your hands, and keep enjoying your favorite things.
Leah Jones 3:11
Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. The podcast where we get recommendations from people without using an algorithm. Tonight, I am here with Alexis P. Morgan. Alexis is my neighborhood sorceress. She is a creative; they do collage, works in radical luxury, just one of the most fascinating people that I am connected with in the hellhole, blazing dumpster fire that is Facebook. And we were introduced indirectly by one of the most dumpster fire-y people on the internet that I've ever sat in a conference room with. Alexis, how are you doing this evening?
Alexis 4:05
I'm fantastic. I still think about that like incident a lot. Am I allowed to name names?
Leah Jones 4:12
You are allowed to name names, yes.
Alexis 4:17
As I was saying earlier, like Gary is -- meeting you was the only good thing that came out of ripping Gary Vaynerchuk a new asshole. [laughter]
Leah Jones 4:32
Alexis had had a -- online interaction -- ripping a new asshole of Gary Vaynerchuk, and then kind of put out a call saying, "Does anybody know," you kind of said to the people you are connected with, "Does anyone know anything about this guy?" And a mutual of ours, Sydney, tagged me in. And I was like, "What do you need to know? I've been in a conference room with him before, I have opinions, what would be helpful to know?" You all had planned a dinner to meet in-person/to talk in-person. And then he either no-showed or canceled last minute and you had bought a really great dress for it.
Alexis 5:21
I did! That dress was spectacular and wildly inappropriate for --- [laughter] -- I was about to show up with cat pasties with a -- [laughter] -- it would have been, it just would have been not cute, not cute at all. What actually ended up happening was is, he sent his little minion to cancel on me, because the heat died down for a little bit. And I said to my assistant at the time, "Just wait, if it kicks back up, he'll be back." And lo and behold, it kicked back up again, because Jason Falls shared my article on Twitter. So, it started going all over the place. So, of course, the team had to hop back on that fire.
Alexis 6:10
So I sat on it, and I watched Gary's socials for a few days, just to see what he was posting. And I ended up responding to the email about rescheduling with, "No, thank you, you have disrespected my time and treated me as if my time is not as valuable as yours, kick rocks, and be blessed." He read the email like 12 times because I had a tracker. So, that's what happened.
Alexis 6:45
I was looking for information because we were gonna talk face-to-face, because I called his bluff, cause he pulled up on my Medium post, and was just like, "If we could break bread in person, you would see that I'm not a bad guy." And it's like, "That's literally not the point of this critique, but okay, sir. All right, I'll call your bluff." And then oh, look, he disappeared. But it's fine, because that wasn't supposed to be my path anyways, which is why we're here. Because I do magic for a living, which is not the original plan.
Leah Jones 7:24
Right, you have been trying -- I don't know, was that like, four or five years ago?
Alexis 7:31
Yeah, that was 2018.
Leah Jones 7:36
And you have basically been trying *not* to do magic the whole time we've known each other. And your guides and your ancestors keep, they just keep putting detours, perhaps? You're like, "I've got a plan!" and they're like, "Uhhh, okay?" How has -- because tonight, you're in this beautiful white top, and you were doing divinations before we came online. We were just running down what the planets have been up to, because it was Mercury Retrograde, and Saturn Retrograde and Jupiter and tonight's a full moon, and so we've just been getting **all** of it lately. So, maybe we're just getting right into it. So today, you were doing divinations. In my understanding, you're kind of always doing magic, but today was active versus maybe passive magic?
Alexis 8:44
It depends on how you define active and passive. So, active in the sense that I was dealing with clients. Every day, just about, I have a routine of things that I do and maintenance work that I have to do. I tell people all the time, that being a professional witch is not at all glamorous, because 90 percent of my workload is just cleaning up offerings, praying quietly like in my closet, which is not ... [laughter] what necessarily comes to mind when you say professional witch or Brouhaha or Priestess or whatever, and time for somebody.
Alexis 9:25
But just about every day, I have some key practices that I do -- both for myself, but also on behalf of my community, cause I have a magical community that I run called Lucifer's Well, which is really a great name to turn away all the "love and light" -sy kind of folks who are going to be judgy and sketchy. Also, for the handful of retainer clients that I do have, which they're all super great, and unique cases unto themselves. I didn't want retainer clients, but of course, as we've established, my ancestors kind of make me do things.
Alexis 10:08
It's interesting because I have been -- my first experience like with magical stuff, formal experience -- was actually when I was a pre-teen, which is pretty common in like occult paces. If you were to send around a survey, all the first-time magic stories are somewhere between the age of 12 and 16. And involve either a crush, a bully, or a weird shop that a child shouldn't have been in by themselves?
Leah Jones 10:39
Or a dusty book in the back of the library and a librarian who lets you have free reign?
Alexis 10:46
It's usually some combination of those things. And in my particular case, I was crawling around the adult section of library and I got hit in the face with an unshelved, improperly shelved, copy of a Edain McCoy's "If You Want to be a Witch," which now I would recommend for various reasons. But 13-year-old me was just like, "Ooh, what is this? Witch?" Because we were coming off the Harry Potter craze, before J.K. Rowling went full-body, TERF-y, awful? It was a formative experience, but that quickly puttered out because my family was not very kind or supportive about it.
Alexis 11:37
And then, I want to say, seven years later, I was 21, one of my adopted -- my first set of adoptive parents, that's a whole story -- passed away and I had this overwhelming urge to get a new tarot deck. And the ball went rolling down the hill and at the time, I didn't intend for this to be a vocation. A hobby, but then it just kind of kept going.
Leah Jones 12:14
One tarot deck led to many tarot decks.
Alexis 12:18
Yeah, one tarot deck led to reading cards and studying the cards, like 14 hours a week, like a part-time job; led to developing a collection; led to buying my first book on actual magic, which was "The Sorcerer's Secrets" by Jason Miller, which is a pretty solid book. That, I *do* recommend.
Leah Jones 12:42
Okay, I will link to that one.
Alexis 12:45
Although, I have side-eye for basically all of my cis, white, men colleagues, because -- oh, boy, just a lot of mess on that front in magical spaces. Then it just kind of took on a life of its own. I thought it was going to be an attorney. [laughter]
Leah Jones 13:07
Okay ... that is ... only knowing you in this grown-up chapter, I would say an attorney is not what I would have pinned on you. Shocking, I know.
Alexis 13:23
Would you have pinned on me?
Leah Jones 13:28
Well, honestly, any of the things that you've tried to do -- it wouldn't surprise me if you were someone who made all their money from writing or from voiceover or from collage and art. None of that would have surprised me. Also, I would say, advocate for artists. I think there's some things about law that also make sense for you, but the American lawyer system doesn't make sense, you know?
Alexis 14:07
In hindsight, now that I've known people who have gone through law school, and I have dated several lawyers, and had those conversations, I now look at that and go, "Child, what?" [laughter] Because I would have been absolutely fucking miserable if that plan had worked out.
Leah Jones 14:30
It's often one of the only -- there's not a lot of careers presented. Unless you -- I don't know *how* people find careers that aren't doctor, lawyer, teacher, nurse. That's what we see on TV. Those are -- I don't know.
Alexis 14:57
Yeah. But speaking to finding careers like that, I think that's a very purposeful sort of architecture of how our school system works. As I keep telling people, had anybody told me when I was even 16 or 18, "You're going to be a full-time witch, you're going to run a digital community dedicated to political magic and talking about politics and magic, and a writer and an artist, and this, that, and the other thing ..." I just would have probably sat there and dumbfounded silence and been like, "What drugs are you on? Can I have some?"
Alexis 15:41
I say this to my community all the time -- I don't really understand how people pick up spiritual stuff as a hobby. Because from the various cultures that make up my background, some of which I am more familiar with, and others -- I am descended from Black folks who were enslaved. So, we don't have a lot of those records. You don't get to *choose* to do this kind of work, it's chosen for you. So, my experience is kind of going around and around in a circle, developing this massive library and a foot locker full of tarot decks and me going, "No, this is just a thing that I do. This is a phase, I'll get through it, it'll be fine."
Leah Jones 16:35
So, Alexis just did what many of my guests do, which is look slightly off-camera at a large collection. It's happened, no matter what I interview people about, it's always just off-screen, and they're looking at this large collection. So, you're looking at your tarot cards and library.
Alexis 17:00
My library is actually out, I have all of my books that won't freak guests out, up front. And then, I have ones that are a little sketchy behind. I live in a studio, so I have it partitioned off. Behind both of my partitions, where you can't necessarily see the titles too much? I was actually looking at my bones set -- I was telling Leah earlier -- that I had pulled my bones set out, which I'm showing her now.
Alexis 17:37
Because I was talking to a client about bone readings, and bone reading as a form of divination. That is, as the name implies, you throw bones down, and then you interpret them. But you also throw -- bone sets can have like little bits and bobs, they can have little pendants, or a piece of jewelry, or shell, or a stick, pebble, whatever. And each of these different pieces in Hoodoo, which is one of the traditions that I practice out of. Hoodoo is a form of Black USCM folk magic.
Alexis 18:20
It's the folk magic of Black people in the United States. But it's also an ancestor veneration tradition, it's a religion in that sense. So, from that point of view, when you read with the bones, you're reading with your ancestors, you're consulting your ancestors for guidance and insight. And each of the pieces that are in a kit have their own sort of special gifts and medicine and messages, of course. But they're alive, so if one of them disappears, the thought is that, "Oh, well, it didn't want to talk to you anymore. It did its work, it's done."
Alexis 18:59
And sometimes they'll come back, and sometimes you'll find something that you really want to add to your bone collection. But you have to ask the spirit of the object first, if it consents to be added to your collection. Oh, boy. Now I'm getting into the special interest, hyperfixation space. But, I find it really interesting, and part of what makes magic one of my favorite things to talk about.
Alexis 19:31
Both, from a practitioner point of view, but also just a curious person and a historical point of view, is that magic, and different forms of magic, and people's relationships with either the supRAnatural or the supERnatural, can tell us a lot about what people value and what people find important, and what different kinds of experiences they were having. What sort of the the context of their lives was like, especially with divination.
Leah Jones 20:07
Can you do a quick -- cause you just very *carefully* said "Their relationship to the supRAnatural and the supERnatural." What's the flip there?
Alexis 20:21
The way that I was using it was, for me, the supRAnatural is about experiences that we can explain, that we feel are firmly within sort of natural experience, and that are the natural extension of the world that's going on right around us. However, it is an antiquated form of supERnatural. And the supernatural says that things are existing beyond like the laws of nature and physics.
Alexis 20:52
So, the reason why I said it that way, was because obviously, different people have different points of view on what's going on. But, a lot of my colleagues and peers -- a surprising number unless you do magic, and then it's not surprising -- are actually mathematicians and scientists with graduate degrees. One of my favorite teachers -- and this is not to put Sarah on a pedestal, she's just really dope -- is Sarah Mastros of Mastros and Zealot, she lives in Pittsburgh. She's a Greek and Jewish witch, who is just incredible. I believe she has her PhD in mathematics. I know she's definitely taught high school kids calculus, which is a feat.
Alexis 21:36
And she's deeply mathematical, and we've had conversations about how magic is fundamentally magical. There's a lot of historical, philosophical context, around that sort of notion, especially within both the Islamic and Jewish traditions, very specifically. About sort of magic existing as a function of math. Because God is a part of nature --well, nature is part of God -- or God is nature and one and the same depending on the philosopher you're reading.
Leah Jones 22:24
My undergrad was in chemistry. And we had a professor who gave a lecture that was -- he was like, "The carbon molecule is proof of God." The most deeply religious, and out about their religion department on our campus, was our chemistry department. Our chemistry department was our most religious department, and then it went from there. I don't even think I saw the lecture, because in college, I would have been like, "Ugh. You're so wrong." But now, I agree with them totally.
Alexis 23:00
You know, I went through a phase where I was very -- I just didn't give a shit about spiritual stuff, or the existence/the nature of God. But you know, I didn't really have an interest in that, and I went to a phase where I felt very disconnected from the world around me. Now, as an adult who is doing this work, I agree with my colleague, when she says, a lot of magic, it's just things that we have not yet learned to explain with math or science.
Alexis 23:48
And given that I also come from an Indigenous background, with my adoptive mothers as Indigenous, and we are *reasonably* certain that my birth father-- my biological father, rather -- is also an Indigenous man, but that's a whole complicated story we're not gonna get into. A lot of Indigenous wisdom, a lot of Indigenous knowing, has been proven to be scientifically sound, in the last 50 years. And there have been some really exceptional, ecological scientists, professionals, and researchers who have written about how, especially within an Indigenous context, ritual is research.
Alexis 24:37
Ritual is the observation of the world around us for the purpose of beneficially interacting with it and existing with it to the best of our abilities, with minimal suffering to ourselves or to the other beings around us. And for me, that informs a lot of how I live my life now, and has given me a lens to look at the world that I feel is far more expansive and skeptical and curious than I may have had if I just stayed in the space where I felt comfortable, which was just being numb to everything. It's been hard, but it's been worth it. And it's been very challenging, because I *know* what people think when they hear professiona witch, or professional psychic. You know, they think of Miss Cleo. Who, I have a party story about ...
Leah Jones 25:43
You have a party story about?
Alexis 25:46
Yes, I do have a party story about Miss Cleo.
Leah Jones 25:49
You actually met Miss Cleo in-person?
Alexis 25:52
Yes. I met Miss Cleo, when I was 21, at a party where I was reading on the patio for tips. It was the "Heart and live music night" at a little place called Mother Earth Cafe in West Palm Beach, and I didn't recognize her. I swear to God, I didn't recognize her and she came, and she sat down, and she started talking to me and she asked me for a reading, and I did my thing. And she got to the end, she was just like, "You really don't know who I am, do you?" I was just like, "No, should, I?" [laughter]
Alexis 26:32
I just honestly gave her this look like, "No, ma'am." Then, she put on the accent, and, apparently all the color must have left my face, because Patty, the woman who owned the cafe -- who's outside smoking a clove cigarette, was behind her -- started laughing. I melted underneath the table.
Leah Jones 26:56
Oh, my gosh.
Alexis 26:58
Because I realized who it was.
Leah Jones 27:00
Were you doing a tarot reading for her?
Alexis 27:03
Yes, I was. And she told me that I was very talented at what I did, and that I should be careful with my skills, and with my talents. We had an interesting conversation about the whole Psychic Friends Network situation. Also, her own spiritual life and practice outside of that; she was actually there reading poetry. She's also very talented poet, I should add. And it was a really surreal fucking night. Yeah, I have to think this is weird as hell.
Leah Jones 27:39
Yeah, that's so weird. I mean, no, of course you didn't recognize her outside of the context of a *commercial.*
Alexis 27:47
Right? And also, I was very little when the Psychic Friends Network situation went down. I think I was maybe, I don't know, that was the '90s, so I was sub-10 years old.
Leah Jones 28:00
I think you might have only even known her as an SNL sketch or as an internet meme and not even known her commercials.
Alexis 28:10
It was such a weird, cultural zeitgeist moment for me, personally. It was interesting, because I was actually there that night with a guy friend that I knew from school, who is very Christian. So the contrast -- those two things happening at once, was quite interesting. But, even at that stage of my life, I didn't really know what I was doing with the path that I was walking down. And a lot of my traditions, so in terms of specific traditions that I work out of -- I am a lay practitioner of Haitian Voodoo. Although, it's pretty likely I'm probably going to end up either Mirage Loa, which is a marriage to a Loa -- which I'm happy to elaborate on what that means -- or initiated some time, maybe in the next five to six years? It's going to be a minute, for various reasons. Not just me not being ready.
Alexis 29:21
Because there's no such thing as divorce in Voodoo, and once you cross that threshold, it's life, baby! So, there's that. I'm also rootworker, so I practice Hoodoo, in terms of formal traditions. And, I have a hodgepodge of sorceress stuff that I draw on/work out of. And, I'm Jewish, which is also a weird situation. One of the things that we've connected over, and me trying to figure out how I'm going to explain myself to a rabbi.
Alexis 30:04
So, that's also been a really complicated part of my journey, too. Because I was raised in a secular Jewish household with secular Jewish values, around my Jewish extended family. But my parents -- which was kind of a bizarre choice, because they were two old, gay, white ladies in the deep south in the 90s -- why would you choose the Catholic Church over trucking us to a synagogue? But then I realized, probably because the only synagogue in town at that point was Orthodox, which explained their thinking there. [laughter]
Alexis 30:30
Because the Catholics will take anybody. [laughter] So we were quasi-ly, barely raised, doing CCD classes that I never gave a crap about, right? But, we casually celebrated Hanukkah, we did Shabbat dinners at my grandmother's condo periodically. You know, the cultural sort of experiences. And I had a lot of Jewish friends; went to plenty bar- and bat mitzvahs. But I didn't come back around Judaism until I was an adult when that parent passed away.
Alexis 30:52
I felt this really intense need to sit Shiva for her. And she was not religious at all, so I have no clue why the hell that happened. Then fast-forward two years later, the Tree of Life synagogue shooting happened, and that did weird things to me. My web leading here is very complicated, but I love it all. I find it really fascinating, as I already said, because it tells us so much about how people exist and how we have things in common. For example, not anywhere within my reach right now, but I'm taking a class on a document called the pirate magic a griped pirate magic Greicy. Oh my god, I can speak. Also known as a PGM, which is a collection of the semiotic magical scrolls that were assembled during the Hellenistic period of ancient Egypt. It's basically all folk magic. It's kind of treated a little bit pinkies-up, a little bit snobby now, cause it's old and shit, but the actual contents of the scrolls and what we have left of these propietary are all folk magic. It's all "How can how could I make Suzy love me?" Well, obviously not Suzy, but pick a name. You know, "This bastard stole my cow."
Leah Jones 33:36
It's all the same issues that went into veteran the Talmud. This person steals your cow, nd they don't harm the cow, and you get it back. Or they do harm the cow, or they harm your pregnant spouse, or they do this. It's all about complicated solutions to minor grievances. Some major grievances -- I'm not gonna say -- so much of Jewish tradition is about applying Torah to modern situations. It's why I love being Jewish. So much in why I converted was I was like, "Oh, well, here's the scaffolding."
Alexis 34:24
Judaism provides a scaffolding for decision making. If had to describe why I also love Judaism and where Judaism sort of wraps itself into my life, it is that scaffolding. I've always said that from the outside looking in, I can understand why somebody just picking up a random tractate of the Talmud would be like, "What in the? Put a baby on a mountain?" But, it's the exercise of ethics and logic. It's having these interesting conversations about theoreticals in order to be able to distill really practical, consistent applications of wisdom that also evolved in response to human evolution. It's really interesting because a lot of what what we would culturally term Jewish magic, which is a whole academic fuss unto itself as to what qualifies under that banner, reflects a lot of this tendencies as well. So, I totally get it because I've said often is that one of the things that I deeply appreciate about Judaism is depths full inquiry.
Alexis 35:58
What makes us tick and how we sort of operate as a unit and as a society, really sophisticated bodies of wisdom are dotted across the planet. A really great parallel example, slightly different, would actually be the the body of wisdom around a divination system called the de lagoon, which is a form of West African divination with shells. So, if you've ever seen what the hell is it, Spike Lee's um, "She's Gotta Have It" on Netflix. There's a scene where one of the characters has his shelves read by his sister, that's divination system.This divination system has been around for thousands of years.
Alexis 36:52
And here, I will physically show you the book of Acts, which are parables. I'm not allowed to read the, because I am not an initiated priestess. So, none of that for me, but, it's a whole textbook. And this is just what's in English, and coming out of one house of Santeria. So, they have these really sophisticated, very thoughtful reflections and prescriptions on how to deal with things, and how to deal with one another. I find that really interesting to kind of compare worldviews, not for the sake of determining which one is better, that's absurd. But better understanding of how the different conditions around different people's lives manifests and with magic, specifically, going back to an academic point of view, so I don't bore the hell out of your audience.
Alexis 37:56
If you look at the difference between what's considered folk magic, and the body of work that's considered "Western occultism," -- which I'm putting in quotes -- a lot of what makes that distinction is that the things that we consider Western occultism were things that were accessible to people of means, usually the clergy, because they either had the wealth to be able to afford to mount these ridiculous ceremonies, and they had the ability to read and write.
Alexis 38:35
A lot of the times, the formation of grimoires was by learned members of clergy, usually the Catholic Church, which is a little bit of a scandal depending on where you say that. But there was definitely a difference, you can tell the difference in concerns and worldviews just based on where practice came from, and when and where and how it was recorded, or otherwise passed from person to person. So, I find all of that fascinating, because it gives me insight into how people operate now, and how to better sort of navigate those situations.
Leah Jones 39:20
I do think it's interesting, because when you pulled out that book about reading shells, you said, "This is what's available in English and is from one house," which I think people who are Jewish who listen know that everybody's -- you ask "Hey, can I do XYZ?" Everybody's always, "Talk to your rabbi." Talk to *your* rabbi, my rabbi might say something different. There's no answer, go talk to your rabbi. That, to me, is a parallel where you follow a specific within a broader worldview, religion, set of rules. Do you have the traditions of of the rabbi that you get advice from or the lineage? I think that's really interesting. And I also think there's -- so much was preserved through oral tradition that, and I can only draw the parallels I can draw -- which is that in Judaism, the Oral Torah is written down, because eventually enough people got literate. And to really get it down, we wrote it down.
Leah Jones 40:31
But there's, we've got a book we call the "Oral Torah", because it was -- people's jobs were to remember different parts of it. So, there is also the point of when does an oral tradition get written down to better share and pass it? And what does the translation -- what is the risk of translation do to it? I think all of that stuff is really interesting when you look at -- I'm just gonna say religion, because that's kind of how I understand it -- of how they get passed between generations, between clergy. What is oral, what is written, what is translated, and your access to the tools of the trade?
Alexis 41:21
It's interesting, because as I mentioned, my primary tradition, structured tradition, one of them is Haitian Voodoo, and Voodoo is decentralized. There's no central authority, per se, in Haitian Voodoo and any self-anointed official authority. It's just kind of "Cool, whatever, we don't care." But we do have a lineage system. So, if you are meant to become clergy, you have a godparent or parents, and usually you're given an initiatory name that distinguishes who you are before the Loa, but also who you are in relationship to your godparent into your associate day, which is the society. Different societies have different regular Mon, which is ritual process.
Alexis 42:26
However, the those regular mom differences vary slightly, depending on where the tradition is from in Haiti. A lot of times, the division is usually in northern Haiti versus southern Haiti, because there's differences politically and geographically in terms of land and all that kind of stuff. But within Voodoo, teaching is almost exclusively oral. A lot of the prayers and some of the indications that are used during various rituals, and various rites are called "Langaj," which is a Creole word, which just means "the language," because they don't actually remember what those words mean. Because they came out of the interactions, the various enslaved people who were brought to Haiti, and started collaborating with one another to match up their spiritual systems as much as they possibly could.
Alexis 43:36
So, there's whole chunks of things that we don't actually quite know what they mean, or what they were. Scientists and researchers have either --because part of the controversy is that sometimes, specifically, ethnographers will present themselves as approaching these things in good faith, and get access to spaces that are sacred and private, and then take those things and put them out in public. Then we get into this really hard discussion about what happens -- specifically speaking to Voodoo -- so what's happening right now in Haiti is, the Catholic Church has generally always looked the other way at folk traditions. As long as you show up to church every Sunday, it's fine.
Leah Jones 44:36
"You need a Virgin Mary? You got one -- this one jumped out the back of a wagon, say right wheels." That's the one in Tandiel in Argentina -- "You need one, we got you, we got you." I am speaking so disrespectfully of a church I'm not a member of, but they could not have become a global religion without looking the other way-slash-embracing local traditions.
Alexis 45:07
Oh, absolutely. I think a lot of people gloss over that. But I made a joke -- and I'm allowed to make this joke because I was baptized at one point -- the Catholic Church recognizes 10,000+ canonized saints. And I was like, "If that ain't an ancestor cult and a papal friggin?" I don't know what it is, but in the case of Voodoo, the Catholic Church has always kind of looked the other way. They've done this with Santeria and Cuba.
Alexis 45:46
If you ask most Voodoo sons in Haiti, what their religion is, they will usually tell you they are Catholic. Or they will very rarely say that they are some flavor of Protestant. However, what has been going on since the first big earthquake circa the early 2000s, early 2010s, is that evangelical organizations from the United States, very specifically, have been going into Haiti and radicalizing the Haitian public. And they're doing it through manipulating aid to Haitian people, by opening schools, by requiring families to convert in order to be able to have their children be eligible to go to these better, safer schools or to receive food, or whatever it is.
Alexis 46:39
I just want to preface this here with a little asterisk -- I know it's not all Christians -- but these specific evangelical Christians have been doing this. And in the process of doing this, they've also very, very heavily demonized Voodoo as a tradition, and there's a reason for that. Because Voodoo in Haiti -- Haiti has always had an accepted but uneasy relationship with Voodoo, because it's very Black and very African, and there are lots of political layers there. But Voodoo is central to the Haitian liberation story.
Alexis 47:25
The Blasket, man was a very major event, we know it happened. We know that a black man was a real person. We don't actually know what was said or done during that event, we have some idea. But the symbolism of that alone, was enough that it set off riots, even in the United States, amongst slaves who were brought from the islands to New Orleans, which is why they stopped importing enslaved people from the islands and bringing them to New Orleans.
Alexis 48:01
But, these evangelicals have been declaring Voodoo spirits to be demons and doing really abusive things. They've been burning down associate days and tearing apart shrines. It's just absolutely brutal persecution of Voodoo practitioners on the island. What has happened, is the numbers are starting to dwindle, because Haiti has a lot on its poor plate . But it started to grow in the diaspora, specifically in the United States. It's brought up a lot of interesting dialogue around cultural appropriation. But also, how do you tend to a faith and to a belief system that is so -- not only intimately tied to land, the place, but also language, and also oral tradition in a way that doesn't dilute it out as this unfortunate kind of cultural disaster is taking place? I consider what's happening in Haiti, and with Voodoo to be a form of cultural genocide, and if I say that in some rooms people would be like, "Oh, that's really strong language, are you sure you want to do that?"
Leah Jones 49:33
It's sounds exactly like what many of us have only recently become aware of with Indian boarding schools?
Alexis 49:40
Yeah, Native American children being brutally beaten, if they spoke their own languages. Which is part of one of my projects, as well -- I'm trying to learn Cherokee, which is very hard for a variety of reasons, because the worldview's entirely different when you speak Cherokee. But, it's been really interesting being a guest in this house, because I'm not Haitian; I was not born on Haitian soil. So, my position in the tradition is very different than somebody who isn't even Black and was born in Haiti.
Alexis 50:24
Which surprises some Black folks in the United States, when I tell them that there are a number of societies in Haiti that wouldn't accept them, but they would accept a white person who was born in Haiti on Haitian soil. I get a lot of looks. It's because of the place, it's because of the soil. I understand, I think I have a relationship that I do with Voodoo, because it's very much connected to being in a place. All of the LOA are expressions of places in nature, and places in the world around us.
Alexis 51:09
It's hard to kind of navigate this context, in the 21st century with globalization and have to fight with misinformation, with people who will watch "American Horror Story," and see representations of Papa legba -- that's a whole -- I could go off on a tangent about poor Papa legba being demonized. Which, of all the Loa, you're gonna pick the one who's represented by Saint Lazarus, the fucking came. Like, what? A lot of times people will take the imagery of go on somebody who is the Baron of the cemetery, who's the spirit of the dead. He's a member of the good day nation, which is all the dead folk. And they will put that on Legba. Legba's an old man? You still shouldn't fuck with him, because he's a trickster, but he's a little man with a straw hat and he doesn't bother anybody.
Leah Jones 52:19
Just sitting on a stump, aving a little smoke, relaxing. Trying not to overheat.
Alexis 52:21
His altar is right next to door, because that's where he customarily sits --by the door. But watching all these cultural phenomena happening, and then trying to reconcile and discern, what is a tradition growing and adapting and evolving? And what is the tradition being dismantled and destroyed? Because there are a lot of lines that get crossed in that process. And the other tradition that I practice, Hoodoo, has really, really badly experienced sort of cultural desecration in my opinion. Because for a really long time, if you went up to a granny somewhere in the deep south, and asked her if she did Hoodoo, she's look at you sideways and ask you if you walked with the devil. But then, if you tried to sweep her feet, tried to take broom over her feet? She'd probably take the broom and beat you.
Alexis 53:45
And if you tried to do laundry on the first of the year, she'd be like, "No, baby, take that out of the laundry, you're gonna watch the luck away." So, lot of these Southern -- and because I know we're on a podcast that people can't see me, but I'm doing air quotes -- "folk practices," Southern superstition, are actually manifestations. And most of the South, not all of the South, but most of the South, of the practices that slaves adapted to -- enslaved people, rather -- adapted to their context, Hoodoo, in terms of its techniques, and its liturgical body, is very much of a response to the conditions of being enslaved. They thought they died, spiritually speaking, when they came here. Because in West Africa, obviously, there are different versions and different nuances, so we don't want to boil cultures down.
Alexis 54:55
The most, specifically within a Congo context, we view the afterworld as Colombia, and Colombia is a vast body of water, where the ancestors rest at the bottom, and they have their own existence, in their own society, and their own flow at the bottom of this big body of water. So, imagine if you were enslaved and taken over a vast ocean, packed like sardines in a horrible ship. There's this sort of internal process of probably feeling like you died. And that's very much reflected --
Leah Jones 55:32
-- that the afterlife is much more vivid than you may be anticipated.
Alexis 55:39
Also, the spiritual loss of that. When you look at the ethnographies that were done of these practices that constitute the body of what we would call Hoodoo -- Dr. Katrina hazard Donald has a really big book called "Mojo Working," which I really love. It's so well-done on this subject. But when you look at the ethnography, we have the two big ones being the work of Dr. Zora Neale Hurston, who did "Go Tell My Horse," and I can't remember the titles of the other two right now, because it's 9:30 at night, I've had a long day. But "Go Tell My Horse," is the big one. She also did a couple others specifically on The States, but she also did them on the islands, as well as "Hi, it's Hoodoo," which you can't get a copy of the five volumes for less than $30,000 because it's out of print, and a lot of the completed copies are in university libraries. But, I got very lucky, and I got PDF scans, thousands of pages of it.
Alexis 57:04
But when you look at those, there is a reflection of the sensibilities that came up in response to slavery. For example, it's called Root working, because a lot of, they're cosmological reasons, but the practical one, too. It's using a lot of material and plants, because one of the things --
Leah Jones 57:32
--oh, like literal roots.
Alexis 57:34
Yeah, literal roots that we use to prepare medicine for enslaved people, because they weren't given access to health care, doctors didn't treat them. On an interesting sort of flip sides, that the white people who enslaved these folks, also forced them to treat the slave-owning family. So, we have lots of historical records of slaves preparing medicine for sick children, for sick slave masters, then on the flip side of that, also poisoning them. So, there's this overlapping history there, as well, that tells us a lot about the conditions that they were facing.
Alexis 58:23
If you look at sort of the oral tradition, and also some of the written down ethnographic information that we have about the use of these plants, not only do we see in certain areas where Indigenous communities had contact with freed Black folk, how their sort of cultures and traditions interacted with that. But, we also see how a lot of the plants that we find in West Africa, either came with them because they were braided into their hair, or because they found very similar plants that they cross-bred into a new variety here in Turtle Island, seeing the Legacy of these things.
Alexis 59:16
But what ended up happening was, because Christianity became such a central part of the abolition movement, and also just slave life in general, because they were forced to. Also for a sizable chunk of the people who were brought to The States. A lot of people don't know this -- Christianity was already in Africa at that point. The Kingdom of Congo had already undergone a mass conversion, where Catholicism at one point was the was the state religion of the Congo Empire, which was a whole thing, and then it reverted and then it went back. A whole mess.
Leah Jones 1:00:04
There was a viral TikTok recently of some white kid, he was probably Mormon, but he was like, "Making this TikTok before I go to Ethiopia," on his missionary trip, and it's just duet after duet of people like, "Oh, you're gonna be surprised when you get there and find out it's a Christian country. You are not bringing Christianity to Ethiopia." He's just getting roasted; he's gonna be roasted the whole two years he's gone, and he's gonna come back to TikTok and find out what happened.
Alexis 1:00:42
Yeah, because the Ethiopian kingdom predates the Catholic Church by a significant amount. Then even in West Africa, missionaries were dispatched to Angola into well, modern Angola, but to this region. Also because of trade, there was encounters with Christianity. Islam was also already in the region, as well. So, some of the slaves who were brought to The States, some of the people who were enslaved -- I like to say people who are enslaved rather than slaves, because "slave" is dehumanizing -- we're also practicing his thumb, and brought that with him. We can see these crossovers into these traditions, because this was already part of the social cohesion and the language that was going on.
Alexis 1:01:38
Then over time, as we sort of moved out of the post-antebellum period into Jim Crow, these practices got absorbed into the broader cultural landscape, as many Black things do, especially in this house, but also generally in the United States, and lost their cohesion as a unit of social bonding, and spiritual bonding, and became folk practices. What ended up happening was, some of the more prominent sort of lineages of this kind of work turned into charismatic Black church traditions. Look at like Kojic, which is a whole basket . I was not raised in the Black church, so I speak of this as an outsider who has looked in and then closed the curtain. The speaking in tongues, the anointing oils, gifts of the Spirit, it's just like, "Huh, you know what those things are? Interesting, interesting, interesting."
Alexis 1:02:53
Those then turned into these big institutions within the Black community, that weren't necessarily recognized as being Indigenous traditions. And there's a whole conversation there about white supremacy and assimilation, and how that impacted the spiritual landscape. But what you're seeing now is a lot of young, Black women, especially in the United States, going back to these traditions to try to find themselves outside of this very patriarchal, very white supremacist narrative. And it's really fascinating to watch, especially as somebody who unintentionally, got a little bit of a head start on that. I'm not bragging, to be clear. I'm just saying I got a three year -- I was on the train, about five years before it really started hitting the zeitgeist.
Leah Jones 1:04:16
So, patriarchy and white supremacy have combined to turn Hoodoo traditions into Black charismatic churches. And now young Black women.
Alexis 1:04:30
Yes. So, I was talking about the struggle between tradition and what is traditional innovation and what is a traditional deconstruction. We're seeing that with Hoodoo, because a lot of the material and a lot of the publications that have been made available outside of very specific academic disclosures (which are also majority white people), have been written by white people. They've been presented as, "Hoodoo is for everyone." Or "It's a Black tradition, but anybody can practice, yadda yadda." People have turned it into whole businesses and brands. Because the magic works, which I try not to -- when I talk about magic to non-magical audiences, I try not to make statements like that. But, it works enough, that somebody's granny remembered the recipe for fast luck oil for 55 years.
Leah Jones 1:05:35
Right.
Alexis 1:05:40
And it's really hard to track what is a modern invention versus what is a traditional one. A really great example that I give with this when I lecture, when I'm allowed to lecture like this, on my special interest is honey jars, right? If you have any sort of passing familiarity with magic at all, at some point, you've probably seen a sweetening jar, or somebody mentioned recipe about "sweetening" somebody because it's usually somebody and it's usually in a love context. Cause some problems don't change at any time in human history.
Leah Jones 1:06:21
I've got a clairvoyant that I talked to regularly, a few times a year. And I'm like, they're only three questions. It's like love, work, money, family. Like there are no other questions. Don't tell me to come up with questions for you. Those are the questions.
Alexis 1:06:45
It's very true. Those are the only three things people give a crap about. Which is why I got super lucky with the luck of the draw in terms of my magical skill. Because, you know, I do my Juno Jar work?
Leah Jones 1:07:02
Yes, I was hoping we would get to the Juno Jar!!
Alexis 1:07:11
This is actually really great segue into my Juno Jar work. So, my Juno Jar work, I do it twice a year. And I make a vessel and make a magical vessel that is a honey jar. I take a very large, it's now very large, because the thing has developed a mine of its own, every twice a year.
Leah Jones 1:07:36
It's not unpopular.
Alexis 1:07:40
It's crazy. I have a waiting list. It's not at all what I anticipated. But in this jar, I combine raw organic honey -- because it's got to be organic, because I'm bougie, how about these things -- with various specific materials that are chosen for the type of medicine. From a both magical perspective, but also looking at how it functions in homeopathic context, which is not a thing I'd ever thought I'd say, but here I am. And I add it to this jar with the petitions of my participants, which are their goals and intentions for the next year-long period. So I put this jar together, I seal it up.
Leah Jones 1:08:33
And you're pretty specific with those of us who participate -- and I have, I think, probably three times, I think -- that this is a wealth-building ... like don't slip a romance petition into the Juno Jar because that's not the purpose.
Leah Jones 1:08:56
Yeah, that's not the focus I have.
Leah Jones 1:09:00
It won't work. It won't work.
Alexis 1:09:04
Well, it might work, but that's not the point of the magic. So, don't waste your money. Basically what I do, is once I add all these petitions and a ritual, then I do a form of magic, which is called fear g, where I work with Juno, who is a Roman goddess. She's specifically the Roman goddess of the State, but also of the Treasury, and of women and children and marriage. So, there's some debate around that, and I seeps her essence into the jar, therefore making the jar a living expression and manifestation of her energy. And I feed and I tend that jar daily for an entire year before I then dismantle it and release the energy from and I say, "Thank you," and I move along.
Alexis 1:10:04
I do this work, and it's inspired, in part, by my background in Hoodoo. Because when people think of Hoodoo, one of the first -- if they know anything about Voodoo at all -- the first thought that they'll go to is a honey jar. Thing is, that honey is actually a very modern invention in the scale of time when it comes to Hoodoo, because traditionally speaking, enslaved persons and Black folks who were freed Black folks, did not have regular access to honey until commercial bee farming became more of a thing.
Alexis 1:10:42
Nobody really had access to a consistent source of honey. Traditionally speaking, honey jars are actually sugar bowls. Molasses bowls, or cane syrup bowls, so they would use cane syrup, molasses, powdered sugar, things that you could get a hold of pretty easily, usually, molasses. Molasses is probably the most traditional of all of them, for various reasons. They would use that as the sweetener, and we think that honey sort of evolved out of this context, because honey became much more ubiquitous, after a certain point, more popular, in terms of an ingredient.
Alexis 1:11:28
Honey also has some corollary functions in European traditions of folk magic, in terms of love, and sweetness and wealth, and all that kind of stuff. Bees have a really strong association with the dead in Greek tradition; there's also a little bit of that crossover, as well. But we don't think honey -- we're pretty sure honey didn't become a prominent part of this process until after commercial bee farm became a thing. Before that, it was molasses. So, a lot of times, if you work with a very traditional fruit worker -- who are hard to find on the internet for various reasons. Mostly because they're 80 million years old at this point, or they are in very, very rural communities that want nothing to do with outsiders, which is also very understandable. And they will work with these more traditional materials, like going back to my Juno Jar. And I started doing this because I was in a pickle.
Alexis 1:12:36
I was living with my sister, at the time who was going through a divorce from her now ex-husband, and I was living in her very large sort of back closet area, the room between sort of the main apartment and the back door. And I needed to skiddadle up out of there because the kids needed space because of law and custody shit. So, I panicked because I had basically melted into my bed for a year because my sister loves me enough to just let me come vegetate in her house for a year. And I had started working with Juno, because I don't like working with Jupiter. So Jupiter, the planet, is different than Jupiter, the day it'll, so Jupiter, the planet's, not my favorite, but I make do. Whereas Jupiter, the day at all, is basically the character of Imperial Rome. He's the big dog of capitalism.
Alexis 1:13:44
There's a whole thing there that I could get into about the politics of Imperial Rome, leading into modern white supremacy. So, Jupiter and I don't play well together, because I am not about this ceaseless expansion kind of bullshit. I'm very much a Saturn girl. Saturn was the god of Carthage and Judea, which were the only two states the Roman Empire never fully conquered. So, I don't play well with Jupiter. But unfortunately, Jupiter is the one who gets called on and gets cited for a lot of the more structured wealth, wealth magic that you'll find outside of folk magic. Spells for fast money because an unexpected bill came. So I was like, "Well, fuck that bastard. I don't get good results with him. I don't like this." And Jason Miller happens to have a communal, cause he runs a course called "Strategic Sorcery."
Alexis 1:14:54
That's literally the name of the course, the "Strategic Sorcery correspondence course." And we have global rites that CO out periodically throughout the year, and one of them was Juno. And I did that one time on a whim, and I had such good results. I was like, "Well, shit. Let me keep working with you." And the very first time I ever actually worked with her, I went into -- it's so weird talking about magic stuff to normal people -- I had a visionary experience, where I saw this absolutely radiant, very dark-skinned African woman who came to me in a vision. She kind of booped me on my nose [laughter].
Alexis 1:15:59
She literally whooped me on the nose, and like, faded out. And I was just, "So that's it. " And, I went about my merry business. Fast forward three months later, my sister tells me that I need to be out of her apartment in 60 days, and I didn't want to live with anybody else. And I had no credit history, outside of my student loans. And I went to Juno, and I panicked. And I said, "Help. I'm about to be in some real deep shit." And I had some -- I should clarify that when I say spirits talk to me, I'm not hearing voices, per se, like I'm not having a psychotic -- I always feel like I need to explain myself. I'm not hearing voices in the way that I would be taking myself to a therapist, if I were hearing stuff like that. But I basically have the sense of "Let's do this." And I ended up having a dream, where she explained what she wanted me to do with her. And I was just like, Ah, no ... you sure we don't have anything else ...?"
Leah Jones 1:17:22
To do something a little less messy than honey, jars of honey and candles and beeswax.
Alexis 1:17:34
I had experimented with doing a small honey jar service before that. And I had gotten some positive response for it. But we have to remember that at this point in the timeline, I was still in abject denial about what my destiny was. So I was just, "Can't you just find me a job? And a business or something other than this?" And I was like, "Well, shit, if I don't do this, my ass is gonna be on fire." So, I put it out there. I didn't expect that anybody would sign up. I think for that first jar, I had 50 or 60 signups. And in addition to that, my petition was for the money in order to be able to move. Shortly after the jar happened, there was a dust-up with a white woman, which we're not going to get into because another whole dramatic situation, but the end result was that I walked away with a tax-free gift of $30,000 as part of an informal fellowship thing that never actually materialized as a form of formal fellowship, so it wasn't considered taxable income; I checked with the a CPA because I didn't want to get in trouble with no fam.
Alexis 1:18:58
But that money -- between the Juno Jar sales and that experience -- was enough that I was able to rent my very first apartment, my very first little studio all by myself. And I was able to purchase the original of a painting called "Hera's Compassion," which was painted by Christie Townsend. It's above my altar right now; it's one of my prized possessions, it's insured. And it shows a dark-skinned Black woman with braids holding a dove in her hands, and she's got a peacock feather off to the side. So, this was interesting because almost all depictions of Hera -- because they're basically none of Juno --are all white women. They're they're *never,* never, never, never Black women.
Alexis 1:20:07
Usually, I won't swap Hera imagery in for Juno stuff because there's reasons for that on a decorum level. But as soon as I saw that painting, I nearly passed out. Because I've never seen that before in my entire life, and I sent Christie an email. And I was just like, "If you still have the original, can you hold it for me, and let me know how much it is?" And I went to Juno and I said, "If you can make this happen, I will buy this painting for you. And I will make it known that this is how you prefer to be seen." Which is not popular with certain racist segments of the pagan community, but eat my ass. [laughter] We're pretty positive she was an African goddess ,so kick rocks. So, that's how that whole thing happened. And every year people would ask me, "Are you gonna do it again? Can you do them quarterly?" I was just like --
Leah Jones 1:22:17
You keep *trying* not to do them. You keep trying, you're like, "This is the last time, I'm moving on with my life. We're not doing this anymore."
Alexis 1:21:34
Then, it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And the last jar I did -- it's funny that we're having this conversation because the cart opens up for the winter one, winter 2022, on the first day of November. I literally opened the cart in November and do the jar in January, because that's how much of a sales period I need. Because that's how many people want -- people have it on their calendars now, which is kind of wild to me. But then again, I also make that information available for people to do that, so I don't know why? It's just got gotten bigger and bigger and bigger each year. And the testimonials are -- I cannot make any guarantees around magical stuff, because that's unethical, it's cat shit. Yeah. And anybody who does is a liar, liar, pants on fire. Don't work with that person.
Leah Jones 1:22:34
You're also really clear in your writings and in your offerings. Like, "Don't do this if you can't afford to, or pick the level that you can afford. Do this only of your own free will. If you're compelled to do this by someone or being pressured into it, It's not for you." And you're like, "I *absolutely ...." It's not fine print, you are like, "Do not pass go ... this is only ..." You really do a good job of protecting people and making them understand that it may work, but there's no guarantee, and I think you were very clear in your boundaries on that.
Alexis 1:23:18
There's an adage in Hoodoo that goes "First comes the working, then comes the work." And I very much try to let people know that the work that I do has an appeal, it has an allure, because this shit wouldn't have lasted for thousands of years if it wasn't doing something. But that you have to meet it halfway-- there's no half-assing the process.` While sometimes you can be delivered straight up miraculous shit, because I've been there, and yeah didn't depo like three times, so it's no longer a fluke over here in Alexisverse. The best plans and best way to use magic, is in harmony with what we know practically works. So, I take a lot of strides because unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues are how shall I say, charlatans?
Alexis 1:24:20
Snake oil salesmen?
Alexis 1:24:36
Yes, just various uncouth, and untenable and unethical people, will make wild assertions, make wild guarantees. They will use really manipulative language, really manipulative sales tactics. One of my favorite examples of this, is this jackass named EA kettling, don't go look up his stuff, he's a bum. But he's very much the embodiment of like 35-year-old edgelord who has grown out of his teenage brand. His brand is literally "Become a Living God." But the funny thing about this cat, is that he got arrested, I believe in 2012. And he was taken to Purgatory State Penitentiary, got caught running drugs and guns. I'm just like, "God has a sense of humor."
Leah Jones 1:25:37
Was that in Colorado?
Alexis 1:25:39
I think it was in Massachusetts. Actually, I can't remember where he is right now. But he's finally, he's --
Leah Jones 1:25:44
-- he's literally in Purgatory.
Alexis 1:25:46
Yeah. He does from the from the jail now, and a sell-out here, being a mess. He's a really great example of the kind of shit that I just am not interested in participating in. Right on the other side of the fence are what I jokingly call "Crystal Mommies." These very life, hipster -- well, not hipster -- girl, gaslight, gatekeep girl, kind of flavored people, who are super into horribly minds, crystals, and vaginal stuff and things, which has a cultural context to it, but do they know any of that? They also have kind of the spiritual industrial complex, that's kind of slick and preys on people's insecurities and their desires for things, in a way that's really unethical and gross.
Alexis 1:26:56
It's interesting for me, because my traditions do, in fact, have a cultural precedence for exchange. If you need to be initiated, you have to pay for the animals that are given as an offering. Those animals are eaten, by the way, so it's not wasteful. You have to pay for your own tools, you have to pay for the labor of the people who helped do the ceremony. So, there's a cultural acceptance of some type of exchange. There's even a cultural precedent of people being lifted out of poverty and Haiti, due to being a very talented Mambo or Hogan. But it's not the same as capitalist commodification. The principle of the exchange in these contexts is, you don't get something for nothing. So, if you want the spirits to make a practical change on your part, you have to feed them, because they have to do that work, they have to have a material connection in order to be able to do that work.
Alexis 1:28:07
So for me, when I think about exchange, within these contexts, I'm not trying to wring every last dollar out of my clients that I possibly can. I'm looking for, what sustains me, what sustains my community, what sustains me in this work, and what gives my spirits the tools that they need to do the work that they do to the best of their ability. And that's a really hard thing to kind of balance in this day and age of Gary Vaynerchuks all over the place. I'm not gonna have 5000 pieces of content, that's just not gonna happen.
Leah Jones 1:28:52
No.
Alexis 1:28:54
There's a whole bunch of stuff I can't even take photos of, or I'll still start playing with lights and telling the leg to fuck off. It's really hard trying to exist in what is essentially a very traditional -- I don't want to say ancient because that's cliche, but old as dirt --social role in this modern context, under capitalism.
Leah Jones 1:29:21
And a pandemic.
Alexis 1:29:24
Also in times where -- there's a joke that magic is recession proof, because people are desperate no matter what the time or place, And that's very true. I have not actually experienced a dip in my business. If, anything, much to my mild horror, I've had an uptick in business. Which tells me that shit's real out there in these streets. So, I feel -- I've personally, a really strong, personal responsibility to make sure that I am not engaging in anything that could coerce my clients, that could represent spiritual abuse, that could represent an ethics violation in terms of the dynamics, the power dynamics of an exchange. That I'm not taking these really vulnerable, sensitive, beautiful private parts of people's lives, and weaponizing them, to take money out of their pocket that they shouldn't be taking, because I've had plenty of people who are like, "I'm just gonna sign up for Juno Jar again." I'm just like,"Wait, wait, wait, wait -- time out. Don't."
Leah Jones 1:30:36
Right.
Alexis 1:30:36
"You don't need to, keep your money." Unfortunately, that's not a common practice. And a lot of spiritual spaces, people will enable all sorts of things, including compulsive psychic visits. I really don't struggle to do it, but it's a lot of work, to constantly be checking those boundaries to make sure that I'm able to do this work that I love, and I think is vitally important, and just part of the landscape of being human. But doing it in a way that doesn't feed the the structural sort of terrorisms that we have going on. That's also part of the reason why all of my work has a magical oath attached, where I ask people, if you benefit materially from the work that I do, you have to give back to others. And not like the Red Cross, I mean, like, hit up someone who's --
Leah Jones 1:31:40
When you see those, when I you see a thread of toss here, buy a coffee, toss your Paypal in here, I have, because I would say I have benefited from your work. I remember, the first one was finding out that I was going to go to Barcelona and I tacked on a trip to Paris to this work trip to Barcelona. That was shortly after the first Juno Jar, and, I was freelancing, and things were really tight. But to be able to add a low-cost trip to a city I'd never been to and then trying to find the mutual aid or in the communities I benefit from, people whose work I've benefited from, who I have learned are unpaid.
Leah Jones 1:32:40
Specifically, there was this woman who did a shit-ton of unpaid diversity and inclusion work at UCB [Upright Citizen's Brigade], to comedy theater in L.A., and New York. Then I found out, it was considered an "internship," and it was unpaid. This was UCB was blowing up and falling apart last year. And when that tweet came through of sending her something -- I because I do work in financial services, and when bonus season came around, 25% that bonus went to my synagogue. Have I done enough? Maybe not, like I'm trying, and I can we I think we can always do better. So, we are coming up on two hours.
Alexis 1:33:40
Oh, my goodness. What I will add to summarize that conversation because for me, -- and I talked about this on my website -- my core operating ethos is radical luxury. It's this idea that everybody is deserving of a life that is beautiful and comfortable, regardless of where or who they are in the world. For me, that means rejecting certain ideas around work and labor. That means removing, dismantling capitalism because I'm a communist -- woo hoo. I'm specifically an anarchic communis., so I'm not a state-ist, communist. It's doing acts of mutual aid. It's cultivating interdependence, it's putting a value on self-expression and comfort. So, part of why I ask people to engage in that work is to really think about where their money is coming from, for one, and what the absence of that money could have -- how that can have an impact on somebody.
Alexis 1:34:53
But also about how abundance is inter-relational, it's inter-dependent. We are inter-dependent on one another, we are also inter-dependent with the planet. And if we blow the planet up, if we blow one another up, eventually, that'll come around to us. That's not an ethical or a conscious stewardship of the wealth and the abundance that we have. Because my ancestors, and their cultures, have very different views of abundance and wealth than sort of American, hyper-steroid capitalism, the dystopian universe that we're currently living in, So, I try to have my work adapt to that, and I think I've been pretty successful, given the feedback that I've gotten. My favorite stories to receive from clients are emails about mutual aid, donations, and contributions that people have done. My community raised $20,000 for a single mother. She's not a single mother, pardon, sorry, Tiffany. But Tiffany and her kids, were in a tight spot. And we did that in less than 24 hours.
Alexis 1:36:13
And watching the magic of that unfold and seeing how people are kind of re-evaluating their relationships, not only with what's possible for their life, on an individual level, but what's possible for society on a big-picture level, and then also taking steps to connect the two, and to put those things into action, has been one of the greatest honors of my life. And the only reason why, when I realized that I was on a feedback loop, the only answer was, yes, sir. on the spiritual stuff, I finally decided to say yes. Even though it's a weird job to have in the 21st century.
Leah Jones 1:36:55
Yeah. Well, Alexis, thank you so much for joining me tonight. Would you like people to find you on the internet?
Alexis 1:37:04
Sure. As long as they are not trolls, but I don't think anybody your audience would do that to me.
Leah Jones 1:37:10
They don't stick around.
Alexis 1:37:14
You can find me at alexispmorgan.com. I'm also on Facebook @AlexisPMorgan. Those are the two primary places you can find me -- my Instagram is dead right now. And I have not gotten on the tickety-tocks with the childrens.
Leah Jones 1:37:35
Or with the middle-aged Jewish ladies, whatevs. Some of us are middle-aged Jewish ladies, I love it. But you have more important things to do with your time than a TikTok.
Alexis 1:37:51
My sister keeps sending them to me and I'm just like, Dang it, I'm gonna ..." I have a profile, I just haven't made any myself.
Leah Jones 1:37:59
Oh, well, if you have someone curating TikTok for you, you don't need to join.
Alexis 1:38:06
That's kind of the conclusion that I've come to. But I'm mainly on Facebook, and my website, my mailing list -- especially in light of Facebook's little oopsies some change ago -- is a great place to find me. And I will be sending out more emails in the future, but, that's where I'm at. I'm always happy to answer questions people have, and all that good stuff. I do a lot of education. I am usually the first person a lot of people meet who come into contact with me who does magic like this. I'm always happy to be a learning resource and to be a positive first introduction.
Leah Jones 1:38:50
There's a ton people can learn just by sitting back and reading your Facebook musings and certainly, I've learned a lot and helping re-wire some of the -- I am trying to learn to say people who were enslaved -- I'm trying to learn to change that language around. Just a lot of -- you know, Gen X, right? -- that I grew up with. If people want to contact you, your preferred is email, not Facebook Messenger, right?
Alexis 1:39:27
Yes, please send me an email. It will disappear into the Facebook Messenger abyss otherwise, that is alexis@alexispmorgan.com. I'm pretty sure there is an email in my bio that's also for my assistant, either one is fine. But, I have a no DMs rule, because at one point in my journey, I had a lot of little white women with a lot of complex guilt around white supremacy, who would regularly crawl into my DMs and write me six paragraphs about existential nature of their white guilt. And I finally had to be like, "No, no, no."
Leah Jones 1:40:08
Buy a book, people.
Alexis 1:40:13
So, email is preferred and usually takes me about a week to two weeks to answer emails, because I am disabled and I have a lot of my plate, but I will answer you eventually.
Leah Jones 1:40:24
Great. Well, Alexis, thank you so much for joining me this evening. You can follow me @ChicagoLeah. The podcast is @findingfavspod on Instagram and Twitter, where I post a little clip every week. Please subscribe on iTunes or Spotify, rate five stars, give me a nice little review. Everything helps and sign up for Juno Jar if you are not compelled to do it. Wait.
Alexis 1:40:59
I mean, I also am adding some services, too, so if you wander over to my site, there will be various things up and going. I would love to have anybody who wants to sign up for my Juno Jar, do so, but please do not feel pressured to.
Leah Jones 1:41:15
Do this thing that we're talking about, but not because we told you to do the thing, but because you want to do the thing, not because we pressured you to do the thing through marketing, which is not the thing we're doing right now. We're just talking about opportunities.
Alexis 1:41:33
Thank you for having me. This was really fun, and I rarely get to natter my brands out about magical stuff, so, I always enjoy sharing.
Leah Jones 1:41:42
That's the point of the podcast.
Announcer 1:41:44
Thank you for listening to Finding Favorites with Leah Jones. Please make sure to subscribe and drop us a five-star review on iTunes. Now go out and enjoy your favorite things.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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